Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies Quotes

“The United States may offer the most pronounced example of a nation that has never been able to overcome its founding racism, and thus has never realized its democratic principles and aspirations.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“The Black democratic tradition teaches us much that all Christian democrats should support: the ongoing battle for an inclusive democracy; the equal dignity and worth of all persons; the moral and legal right of everyone in society to political participation; the protection of human rights, with special focus on the mistreated, marginalized, and minoritized; the struggle for advances in economic democracy and basic economic justice; and the vigorous protection and improvement both of democratic norms and democratic institutions. These norms and institutions are always at risk, but especially when those in power don't like the results of free and fair elections, and even more so when the decisive votes are provided by people of color that some powerful people, in their heart of hearts, think never really belonged in the first place.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“This much is clear: the defense of democracy in my country today is clearly intertwined with the four-hundred-year struggle of African Americans to participate in a polity that at last includes them in the democratic covenant on equal terms. This is one path ahead toward the defense of democracy from its Christian enemies—that is, the embrace of the dissident Black Christian democratic tradition, as articulated by leading Black thinkers since the beginning of our nation.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“I would only say that cynicism about democracy probably will not help fix what is so very broken here. The idea that we never were and never can be anything more than a white-male-plutocrat ethnocracy, that the game is rigged against everyone else, does not encourage the fight for democracy that we need here.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“The United States may offer the most pronounced example of a nation that has never been able to overcome its founding racism, and thus has never realized its democratic principles and aspirations. Overall, the United States has enjoyed remarkable democratic stability. It has never set aside its democracy for monarchy, autocracy, or a new kind of political regime. (Consider the contrast with France.) Yet this same country has been unable to arrive at a steady practice of fair, free, and full democratic participation rights on the part of those deemed non-white. Neither the Christian nor the liberal principles that helped create modern democracy are capable of being realized in a nation that is founded on racial hierarchy. But the white population of the United States, as a whole, has so far not been persuaded to abandon it. Whenever steps of progress are made, white backlash is fierce.

Authoritarian reactionary Christianity in the United States and a number of other countries is deeply entangled with white racism. In the United States, white people do not generally accept that this entanglement exists. Many who do see the connection want little to do with Christianity. Some of the hard-core Christian reactionaries, on the other hand, with increasing openness define Christianity in white ethno-nationalist terms.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“Authoritarian reactionary Christianity turns out to be a global phenomenon, affecting historically Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant lands. Its antiliberalism has very deep roots, and that antiliberalism has intensified in successive waves over the last fifty years. It is in the marrow of hundreds of millions of Christians, and it has been wired into right-wing politics in many countries, such that leveraging its passion can help ambitious politicians gain power.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“When pastors publicly applaud right-wing militias like the Proud Boys, on the eve of the attack on the Capitol, they are not just participating in Christian nationalism. They are inflaming right-wing religious/insurrectionist violence. We have witnessed in our time the movement of some beyond Christian ‘culture wars’ to actual Christian holy violence.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“January 6 was the culmination of authoritarian tendencies visible from the moment the Trump campaign was launched. It also marked a terrible advance in the radicalization of a significant number of authoritarian reactionary American Christians.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“I believe it is now reasonable to suggest that the perceived secular revolution(s) of the 1960s finally created the motivation necessary for the United States to have its first experience of an organized religious (mainly Christian) counterrevolution. That counterrevolution is a force of such power that, for the first time in US history, it threatens not only the original ‘secular state with religious freedom’ arrangements of 240 years ago but also American democracy itself.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“It is a documented fact that the January 6th, 2021, US Capitol insurrection and the preliminary efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election contained a sizable conservative Christian presence, and had the acquiescence, ‘prayerful support,’ and fondest hopes of many Christians. This reveals the double-edged power of despair over the loss of a close election by their guy/their side, and a demonized reading of the Democratic Party that has swept through many conservative Christians. It was a counterrevolutionary effort to win this battle once and for all. It also reveals a substantial fringe of reactionary Christians slipping free of the constraints of our democratic system and the rule of law.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“It is interesting that the main group in the United States expressing fears that the US Muslim community constitutes a threatening antidemocratic population are the far more numerous fundamentalist and evangelical Christians who could pose a much more profound threat to democracy. It is not fundamentalist Muslims who today are serious candidates for federal and statewide offices in the United States. It is Christians who are positioning themselves to remake our 240-year-old democratic and church/state arrangements.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“It can be documented easily that in multiple countries conservative Christians have demonstrated susceptibility toward or active support for political authoritarianism as just described.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“The claim here is that the slide away from democracy and toward right-wing authoritarianism in nations including Russia, Poland, Hungary, Brazil, and the United States today, and other nations in the past, is connected to and exacerbated by the historic and contemporary attitudes of a substantial part of the Christian populations of these lands. There are "Christian" versions of populism, fascism, authoritarianism, and nationalism.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“This crisis of democracy is far more than merely a US trend. Despite national differences, the characteristics of what I will call authoritarian reactionary Christian politics are widely shared. This is a global phenomenon.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“As an American, I acknowledge that this book is a reflection on the era associated with former president Donald Trump—especially with the shocking events after the November 2020 election, when avowed Christians, acting for explicitly Christian reasons, were at the forefront of those who sought to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the 46th US president. Their dangerous attitudes were seen most strongly in those who violently breached the US capitol building on January 6, 2021.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

“This book does not intend to say everything that could be said about the relationship between Christianity and democracy, but it does intend to say four important things:

1. Christians should support democracy because, despite its many imperfections, it is the best political system yet developed.
2. Many Christians, in the United States and around the world, instead favor or are open to authoritarian and reactionary political trends that pose a grave threat to open and free democracy.
3. Due to this tendency, Christians turn out to be among the leading threats to democracy in much of the world, and this is not at all where Christians should be located politically.
4. Responsible Christians need to recommit to democracy, with Christian leaders guiding the Christian community toward a defense and practice of democracy that fit with the convictions of Christian ethics.”
― David P. Gushee, Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies